


Over Coffee

by lusteralliance



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Coffee, Friendship, Gen, Just a little thing for fun, Male-Female Friendship, can be read as platonic or romantic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 01:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19897768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusteralliance/pseuds/lusteralliance
Summary: Hubert, a known caffeine addict, encounters a young woman whose coffee drinking habits are more unhealthy than his own. His attempts to help her cause only more trouble.





	Over Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> Just for fun! Hubert doesn't have much stuff on him so this is dedicated to you my lad

Hubert was stirring a cup of black coffee at the end of the hall, a close eye on his Lady Edelgard. She, as well as the leader of the Golden Deer, Claude, and the leader of the Blue Lions, Dimitri, was in the center of the great gathering area, greeting each other after quite a while apart.

Claude, after clambering off a shocked Dimitri, ran over to Edelgard and gave her a respectfully loose bear-hug. “I missed you, too, Edie!”

“You’ve never called me that before, please don’t start now,” Edelgard replied into Claude’s shoulder, still hugging him back. 

Hubert narrowed his eyes as Claude took both Dimitri and Edelgard’s hands in his own and started jabbering about how long it had been. The princess’s retainer was so focused on being prepared if Claude started to monkey around that he had not noticed someone creep up behind him. When he heard the clink of a cup at his back, he whipped around (but gently, so as not to spill his drink).

A shy-looking young woman was standing nearby, her periwinkle hair braided and knotted in an unkempt but quite lovely arrangement. Her umber eyes were half open, and she seemed horribly exhausted.

“Are you all right?” Hubert asked uneasily, and the young woman flinched. She nodded quickly, scurrying a little ways off to where the coffee, cream, and sugar was kept in an array of jars and bottles by the entrance of the hall.

Hubert watched, intrigued, as she filled her cup halfway with coffee, then put in an ungodly amount of sugar and no cream. She was about to take a sip—before even stirring!—when Hubert was able to bear this sight no longer.

“Hold on a minute!” he gasped, and the young woman stared at him wide-eyed, her lips paused on the edge of her mug. “You mustn’t drink that. That will destroy your heart!”

She blinked in surprise. “What...what do you mean?” Her voice was small and timid, as if she thought she would be punished for speaking. “I always drink coffee like this….”

“ _What_!” Hubert walked over, and the young lady took a couple steps back, then stumbled over the hem of her dress and spilled half her drink over her bosom. She yelped in shock and froze in her place, suddenly rendered immobile.

The steam of the hot coffee started to rise from the awful stain on her black and gold uniform, and Hubert’s eyes widened in horror.

“Oh! Are you—”

Without missing a beat and without acknowledging his words, the young woman hurriedly placed her cup on a nearby table and scrambled away sobbing, leaving the aroma of sickeningly sweet coffee in her wake.

The Red Eagle grimaced at the granules of sugar he saw slowly disintegrating in the puddle of coffee at his feet, and he went to retrieve a towel to clean up the mess.

-

Hubert never saw the young woman again for the rest of the day, which was riddled with mindless festivities. It just so happened that he was making another cup of coffee when he did.

In truth, he heard her first; faint sniffles and whimpers in the cabinets that held extra sugar and cinnamon, for those students who had strange tastes.

Hubert recognized her hiccuping sobs, and he knelt down, peering at the closed wooden cabinet door, amazed she had managed to cram herself in there.

She was so painfully shy. It reminded Hubert a bit of his younger self, before he had met Lady Edelgard. As much as it annoyed him to fraternize with the other houses, he knew he couldn’t just leave the young woman to herself, not like this.

He knocked after a moment’s hesitation with his knuckle, and he heard a small “eep!” and then silence.

“...Would you—erm...would you like to share a cup of coffee with me?”

After a while, he heard a shaky reply through the cabinet door. “...No….”

“We don’t have to share. You can just drink mine,” Hubert ventured. “It doesn’t have as much sugar as yours did, but I’m sure it will thus treat your innards a little better.”

He waited for the young woman to refuse, but to his surprise, the cabinet door squeaked on its hinges, and it opened just a crack. Hubert slowly opened it a little more, then handed his hot drink to the student inside. She took it with a tiny “thank you” and pulled the door closed.

Hubert knelt outside, listening intently, when a familiar voice coming from behind him made him jump.

“Hubert? What in the world are you doing on the ground?”

The young man scrambled to his feet at Lady Edelgard’s question, and he bowed his head and spluttered, “Forgive me, milady! I was just...cleaning up a mess I had made earlier.”

This was not exactly a lie.

Lady Edelgard raised an eyebrow, then nodded, smiling. “Do what you will. I’m a bit surprised to hear you made a mess at all!” She patted Hubert’s shoulder. “Come join us for dinner soon, you worked too hard stalking Claude and Dimitri and I around the monastery.”

“I will, milady, thank you.”

When Lady Edelgard disappeared around the corner, the wooden door squeaked open. Hubert blinked and watched a trembling hand place an empty cup on the ground.

“You drank it all?” Hubert observed, quite amazed at the young woman in the cabinet. “That was still very hot!”

“The heat is what keeps me awake,” the young woman replied, the door still half open.

“If I served you a cup of boiling water, would you drink that, too?”

“I have standards,” she told Hubert, who laughed and picked up the empty mug and placed it on the table over the cabinet.

“My name is Hubert. I am the retainer of Lady Edelgard. What is your name, if I may?”

“Um...Miriam….” the young woman mumbled.

“Miriam?” Hubert echoed.

“ _Marianne_.”

“Oh, Marianne. Forgive me.” Hubert rested his chin on his palm, his elbow on his knee. He tapped the side of his face with his fingers as he swept his gaze across the empty hall, then asked, “Well, how was it?”

“How...how was what?”

“The coffee I made.”

“Oh...it was really good,” Marianne replied softly. “What’s in it?”

“Just coffee, and enough sugar to dull the bitter edge. Some mornings I add a spoonful of cream, if matters really are that arduous.”

The door squeaked open just a little more, and Marianne peeked out. Her umber eyes glistened with tears, and she bit her lip shyly.

“Um...can you teach me how to make coffee? The way you do?”

Hubert, in his delight, could do nothing but oblige.


End file.
